Part 25 (1/2)

He waited.

A short while later, the door swung open to reveal a tidy courtyard walled and flagged with the same red-blue quartz. The air had a calm, floral quality. A stuffy little grey-haired man wearing servant's brocade stood there, blinking. He took one look at Granger and immediately tried to close the door again.

Granger booted it open, knocking the servant to the ground. 'Where's Maskelyne?' he demanded.

The man stared up at him in horror. 'What are are you?' you?'

'Where is your master?'

'Gone,' he replied. 'At sea.'

'Where's the girl?'

The man blinked. 'What girl?'

Granger stood on his neck.

'She's with him,' the servant gasped. 'They're . . . all . . . at . . . sea.'

'Where?'

'I don't know!'

Granger put more weight down on his boot.

The man sputtered something incomprehensible.

Granger removed his boot.

'They went . . . to find trove,' the servant said. 'I don't know where.'

Granger raised his boot again.

The servant lifted his hands in a pleading gesture. 'The Drowned will know,' he said. 'My master keeps a few specimens in his laboratory. They see and hear everything he does.' He stared at Granger. 'They look just like you.'

The servant who gave his name as Garstone led Granger through a series of plum-pink amethyst halls and corridors, and finally up a stairwell into a laboratory that occupied most of the southern half of the second floor. Dozens of Unmer machines in various stages of disa.s.sembly lay scattered about on workbenches, along with a number of old gem lanterns and tools. A writing desk occupied the centre of the chamber, upon which rested a pile of papers, a metal pen in its holder and a device consisting of a marble trapped in a pivoting tube of gla.s.s. Situated around the desk, four huge brine tanks each containing a different colour of seawater bubbled quietly. Wide tubes connected them to the ceiling. Two men sat in crimson Mare Regis brine, playing cards. A young girl looked out from the yellow brine Mare Sepsis tank, while a partially dissolved old man sat on a stool in the gra.s.s-green Mare Verdant tank. The final tank had been filled with Mare Lux brine. On the floor of this tank sat Creedy.

Granger's former sergeant and partner looked up, then stood up and stared out through the gla.s.s.

Garstone indicated Creedy's tank. 'That one still retains his senses,' he said. 'He's only been submerged a week or so. I'll go downstairs and fetch you some chalk and a slate.'

'Stay where you are,' Granger said. He walked over to Maske-lyne's desk, s.n.a.t.c.hed up some papers, then reached for the pen. But he stopped. Something was bothering him. He glanced back at Creedy's tank and noticed three identical pens lying on the floor in there. Granger stepped back and studied the floor in front of the desk, where a slender gap betrayed the presence of a trapdoor. He grunted, then stepped to one side of the trapdoor before removing the pen. The trapdoor fell away, slamming against the inside of a shaft. From the darkness below came the smell of brine.

Granger started to write his message on a sheet of paper.

'Please,' Garstone said. 'Those are my master's private papers, his work, his experiments. He'll kill me if they are spoiled.' He came over to the desk, opened one of the drawers and took out a slate, which he handed to Granger.

Granger threw the slate aside and continued to scribble over Maskelyne's doc.u.ments. Then he strolled over to the Mare Lux tank and held up his message to Creedy.

WHERE IS THE GIRL?.

The brown seawater made Creedy seem huge and distorted. His eye lens dilated. He picked up a stub of chalk and a slate from the floor of the tank and wrote his reply.

f.u.c.k YOU.

Granger scrawled another message on the back of the paper.

TELL ME, OR YOU DIE.

Creedy gave him an ugly grin. He wiped his slate clear and wrote: COME GET ME.

Granger returned to the desk, where he gathered up all of Maskelyne's doc.u.ments. He scrunched them up and piled them around the base of the tank, as Creedy looked on from his watery prison. Granger walked back to the desk and flipped it over. Maskelyne's gla.s.s device fell to the floor and shattered. A wire extending from the underside of the desk disappeared into a hole in the floor.

'What are you doing?' Garstone protested.

Granger ignored him. He hunted around the workbenches, searching through the tools, until he found a flat-headed screwdriver. He used this to disa.s.semble the writing desk. In a short while he had a decent-sized pile of wood, which he piled around the doc.u.ments at the base of Creedy's tank. Then he took out his knife and flint, and lit the paper. Flames blossomed.

Creedy thumped his fist against the inside of the gla.s.s. Garstone yelled at Granger to stop.

Granger held up his message again.

WHERE IS THE GIRL?.

Creedy erased his slate and frantically scribbled a new message.

PUT OUT FIRE.

The flames had begun to take hold of the wood now, and were licking the walls of the tank, staining the gla.s.s black. Smoke began to fill the laboratory.

Creedy banged his slate against the tank.

PUT OUT FIRE.

Granger held his own sign higher.

WHERE IS THE GIRL?.

Creedy scrubbed his slate clear again and wrote: LOOKING FOR TROVE. WHISPRING VAL. M. REGIS.

The fabled treasure-hunting site. Dredgers had been scouring the Whispering Valley since its rediscovery three years ago. The valley held the ruins of an Unmer castle, destroyed and abandoned long before the rising seas had claimed it. The sheer number of weapons salvaged from the surrounding area led many captains to believe a great battle had taken place there.

Granger wrote another message.

HOW LONG?.